


nightmares (I always wanted to return)

by owlinaminor



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, M/M, Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) Compliant, Postmodernism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 19:19:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14837642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: “I still get nightmares.”Hermann, duringPacific Rim: Uprisingand after.





	nightmares (I always wanted to return)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tinypersonhotel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinypersonhotel/gifts).



> i wrote most of this in a mad rush soon after seeing pacific rim uprising, then school and work got in the way for a while, so it took me until now to finally finish, revise, and post. i'm sure there are scores of other pru takes out there, but, well... i had to write this one.
> 
> dedicated to [laura](https://twitter.com/laubeary), because there's no way i would've been motivated to finish this up without her.

 

 

> _“And scientific aside… Hermann, if you’re listening to this, well I’m either alive, and I’ve proven what I’ve just done works, in which case ha I won.  Or I’m dead, and I’d like you to know that it’s all your fault, you know, it really is, you drove me to this, in which case, ha I also won.  Sort-of.  I’m going in in three… two… one.”_

It is too quiet in the lab.

Usually Hermann can hear it from two floors up, the pounding bass of old American rock or the intense chords beneath Newton’s mother’s vibrato.  Or if not music, he can hear machines whirring, gears turning – the hum of a PCR machine, the crash of samples dropped to the floor, the shouts of Newton’s victories or defeats.  But today he hears nothing, even though he knows Newton must be there, went down after an early breakfast hours ago with three cups of coffee and five packages of rice crackers –

It is too quiet.  It is not entirely quiet.  There is a machine running, a timbre Hermann doesn’t recognize.  He can’t place it – and they haven’t gotten new equipment since February 2024.

He starts walking faster – elevator won’t come even after four jabs at the button so he spins for the stairs, hops and skips with the cane in an unsteady harmony with the whirring below, all the way up to the open floor –

A mass of neural circuits, hanging in green fluid.  Makeshift pons, threading through the lab like so many links of muscle tissue.  One glowing headset hanging and the other attached – attached to a man slumped on the floor, bloodshot and shaking.

_Newton!  Newton, what have you done?_

Hermann isn’t sure if he thinks the words or screams them – he is only two legs rushing forward and crashing to the ground, two arms raising to bang the headset until it gives way, two hands reaching in to cradle Newton’s face – _stop it stop it turn that fucking machine off doesn’t he know he’s going to kill himself –_

Reaching in but there’s a wall in the air, ice or cement or kaiju blue.  And Hermann is sliding backwards, the floor goes diagonal beneath him and pulls him along like one of his 3-D models taken on substance – and Newton is shrinking, growing fragile and bloody an image of war on a distant screen and Hermann _cannot reach –_

Hermann wakes, hot and sweaty in his dark room at the Shatterdome.

His heart is racing, too big and too unsteady for his chest, and his lungs feel ready for escape.  He places his hand over his chest, counts to thirty slowly and runs through the derivation for centripetal force in his head.

And then he swings his legs over the side of the bed, slips his feet into warm, wool socks, and turns on the electric kettle for tea.

 

 

He keeps a picture from Hong Kong, the day they stopped the clock.

It sits in a drawer in Hermann’s nightstand, corners dog-eared and colors smudged from constant folding and unfolding, from taking it out when he cannot sleep and flattening, flattening, constantly trying to restore its initial shine.  The photo captures LOCCENT just after the breach closed – once the choppers were safely deployed and Raleigh secured, Tendo pulled out his phone and began to document everything.  _Wanted to be able to tell his grandkids about this one day_.

And of course he captured this when Hermann wasn’t looking: him and Newton, staring at each other with these bright smiles, part manic victory and part smug glory.  Newton’s arm slung across Hermann’s neck – and Hermann only needs to trace the curve of the photo to remember the feeling, a touch easy and natural as the flow of Riemann's formula.

He takes out the photo now, to accompany his cup of chamomile, and feels a phantom brush over his shoulder.  Pauses, holds his breath – and it is gone.

And he leans back against his pillow, takes off his socks, and remembers _after_ – the Shatterdome turned into a party, a memoriam to all who were lost and celebration for all who were still present, pumping basslines and wild dancing and all the alcohol that was hidden under bunks emerging from hibernation.  And Newton sitting on the outskirts, released from medical but still shaking.  And Hermann crossing the dome floor and arriving at a point just in front of Newton.  Nudging Newton’s foot with the edge of his cane.

Newton had looked up at him, this piercing thing as bright as a midsummer sky and twice as sharp.  His mind was open, all the corners and crevices and quiet caverns, and Hermann saw his reflection clearly.  Saw the two of them together on the surface of a massive ocean, ready to dive together.

Hermann had reached out one hand.  Taken one step closer.  Newton had allowed himself to be pulled.  Stood up and hovered, just a few inches away, just out of reach.

Hermann remembers thinking of parallel asymptotes.  Two curves diving towards each other, but never quite touching, never quite reaching the limit – when he learned about the concept in school, he asked his teacher why they couldn’t just push through the gap.  She said, _it’s mathematically impossible._   And he replied, _mathematics is all building from definitions – couldn’t they just define it differently?_

Hermann remembers thinking of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

_Do I dare disturb the universe?_

“You think too much,” Newton said.  And he stepped closer – reached in – his arms rising, his hands cradling Hermann’s cheeks, thumbs rough and scratchy on the stubble Hermann hadn’t quite cleared away.

From that initial contact, it was easy to extrapolate.  One touch became an ocean, the rolling up of Newton’s sleeves became the rolling down of his jeans, pulling Newton from his spot on the Shatterdome floor became pulling Newton into his quarters and shutting the door tight, _you think too much_ became the inability to think at all, became two bodies spread on a thin government-issue mattress fragile and trembling, became tracing every curve of the kaiju on Newton’s skin with Hermann’s mouth, became arching and gasping and _connecting_ here as they had in the junkyard seeing through each other’s eyes feeling through each other’s limbs touching –

Hermann remembers lying still in the aftermath, his thumb tracing the circles of Newton’s knuckles.  Raising one hand to his mouth to kiss.

“Do you think they’re really gone?” Newton asked.

“My love,” Hermann said, taking note of Newton’s hitch of breath at that diction, “I think they know we’re not to be trifled with.”

 

Hermann takes a sip of his tea.

It’s gone cold.  Of course.  Tends to do that, these days.  He gets lost in a memory, drifting with himself and no other mind for balance, and loses the passage of time.  It’s no wonder the younger lab techs have started calling him “old man” – he may be only forty-six but his steps are slower these days, and he hasn’t the faintest idea what the kids mean when they say he could benefit from long walks or moisturizer.

His room is dark.  That’s the thing about these bunkers, deep on the lower levels of a Shatterdome – they’re always dark.  The only natural light is from a tiny window halfway up the wall.

He powers up his tablet and opens the most recent edition of _Nature._   People are still publishing on kaiju biology even now, even ten years after the last specimen was delivered on Earth’s door bright and pulsing.  Hermann reads every issue.

 

 

He falls asleep again eventually – tablet at a precarious angle atop his lap, glasses askew, blankets half-pushed down.  This time, the nightmare does not come.  Newton is not in the lab, there is no green, there is no whirring, there is only the deep black of a twilight sky and the phantom brush over his shoulder of someone reaching closer.

But sometimes, this is the nightmare:

Hermann walks into the lab, and it is clean.

His half, of course, is always clean – files stacked neatly into cabinets, chalk arranged on the bottom strip of the rotating board setup in length order, holoprojector wiped clean of dust every Friday at 1900 hours.  Yet now the other half is – samples cleared out, surfaces wiped clean, concrete floor bright and shiny.  Hermann’s first thought is to wonder how Newton got the kaiju blue stains out.

And then he sits down in the closest chair, hard, before he loses his balance and slips on the too-bright floor.

He hears rumors, of course.  Tendo says something about top brass not taking it well that one of their scientists stole and modified government property to use in unsanctioned experiments.  Never mind that he’d done it to _save the fucking world_ – never mind that _he’d nearly killed himself in the process_ – Hermann pounds on the new Marshall’s door one night ready to knock out any teeth necessary to get _proof_ and Herc just frowns at him, offers a glass of whiskey and the faint warning that it was almost Hermann, too.

 _Private sector was offering the big bucks and the glory, how could I say no,_ Newton’s email reads.

But there’s something in the spaces, the gaps between the lines, between the contours of _e_ and _a_ in his _Dear Hermann_ , something Hermann can’t quite read.

 

 

It’s been close to ten years of silence.

Sure, they talk, sometimes.  Hermann will call, Newton will pick up, they’ll gossip for two minutes about mutual friends and PPDC politics and whatever insane research is getting published these days.  Hermann will ask when Newton is next going to be in the area.  Or if he might want to look at some models Hermann has been building.  Or if he might want to collaborate on a paper like in the old days, before _save the world_ was imminent and all-encompassing.  And Newton will make some excuse – his work schedule is too busy, he’s coming up on a deadline, Alice wants him at home for something.  Hermann isn’t sure who Alice is or where she came from (he only ever hears her _name_ , too soft and round for comfort) and he’d rather impale himself on his own cane than meet her.

It’s been close to ten years.  Each year, Hermann picks up something new to pass the time, occupy his constantly raging brain cells.  First it’s quantum chemistry, then organic chemistry, then biochemistry, then microbiology, then anatomy and physiology, and then he realizes he’s grown closer and closer to kaiju biology with each passing field.  Soon he’s bursting at the seams, stocking his bedroom full of journals and textbooks to keep from turning off the light.

And yet – still the nightmares.  He falls asleep, and Newton hovers before his eyes – drawn inward and shivering, fading into the drift.

 

 

“You should drift with him again,” Mako tells him, in 2033.  “Just the two of you, without the kaiju.  It’s unorthodox, yes, but the PPDC would provide you with equipment, if you asked.  Jaeger pilots do it as a form of therapy – a way to sort out your challenges without the stress of the battle getting in the way.”

But the minute Hermann suggests it – during another of their too-short conversations – Newton hangs up.

 

 

Newton visits with Liwen Shao, and it’s another repeat of the same pattern.

He is physically there, not separated by email or phone lines, but that is almost worse.  Here Hermann can see him, can feel him – the shake of a hand, the brush of a shoulder, the two steps falling into time – but cannot quite _reach_ him.  It’s a perverse kind of action and reaction: Hermann leans in, Newton leans out.

 _“I know how busy you are,”_ Hermann says.  _“I don’t want to impose.”_

And Newton shakes his head, says Hermann could never impose, but Hermann hears the timbre in his voice – one chord not quite meeting another, pitches out of alignment like two pilots about to careen out of their jaeger.  Hermann leans in, Newton leans out.  Hermann pitches an idea, Newton calls him crazy.  It’s an old game, familiar after ten years, but it still stings like a brand-new scar.

_“Hermann, I’ve gotta stop you.”_

He’s off balance.  Hermann has thought it every time he’s seen Newton since their lab was emptied, but it is more pronounced now – something between the hard _t_ of his _gotta_ and the realization that he never rolls up his sleeves, not even when given a new project to examine, a new kaiju theory in which to dig his heels and build office space.  The man Hermann knew in Hong Kong would pounce on these new thrusters before Hermann could even finish explaining them, would be rattling off four different ideas for how the genetic composition of kaiju tissue is activated by rare earth elements, developing experiments to test Hermann’s hypotheses and practical questions to help make the whole system better.  That Newton would be pushing back into Hermann’s space, his voice rising like a tea kettle just this side of a boil, pulling genetic knowledge and engineering impulse out of his ridiculous head before he could fully articulate his ideas.

But this Newton, this too-polished hair-slicked-back constantly-busy Newton, is quiet and slippery, sliding out of Hermann’s grasp before Hermann can begin to ask him to stay.

 

 

He was able to drift with Newton, once.  The middle of a junkyard, the edge of the world.  Clouds spinning and growing new above them, the earth spinning out of orbit below.  He felt curiosity and anger and determination, this endless drive to understand the world and put it to work – and he reaches out sometimes now, late at night when he cannot sleep and has exacerbated all other options.

He reaches out – closes his eyes and lets the bed fall away beneath him, lets the blank wall of his too-dark bedroom fall away before him.  His mind is always full, deliberately so, the chalkboard scribbled over with three layers of equations.  But now he gets his stool, and he places it squarely beneath the middle board, and he begins to erase.  One variable at a time, he opens himself to the drift, and he stretches across space to the cold apartment where Newton must be.

Once, when he had a few days of vacation between PPDC assignments, Hermann took a trip to see the Grand Canyon.  He remembers standing on the edge, his two feet planted squarely on the ground and his cane digging in so sharply, it would leave a mark after.  He remembers the sky stretching above him like an endless blanket of blue, dilatant and somehow accelerating, like the expansion of the universe.  He remembers emptiness, nothing to see but rock and sand, every oxygen molecule a unique taste on his tongue.

He reached out an arm just to feel the imbalance – just for a moment.  To pull himself out of symmetry.  And he felt no body grabbing back in turn, no friendly ghost nipping at his fingers – only emptiness, only earth and sky.

Sometimes when he reaches for Newton, he can imagine the faintest flicker, catch the shape of a smile or the stab of frustration, imagine that the man whom he thought gave weight to the word _humanity_ is still there –

But then Hermann opens his eyes and he is still on his bed.  His glasses are too tight.  And his arm aches from reaching out, reaching out, grasping at nothing.

 

 

_And then he dreams, and this is the nightmare:_

_Newton is there, at first too close and then suddenly too far.  Fading slowly away.  An asymptote diving towards infinity.  Newton is shaking beneath the weight of a neural bridge scraped together from garbage.  Newton is shrinking.  Newton is pulled willing into the Pacific, and Hermann cannot follow._

 

 

He went to a therapist for eight weeks, in 2031. 

The ordeal was PPDC-sanctioned.  Marshall-suggested.  Department-approved.  And never mind that Hermann headed the entire research team, it had been _strongly suggested_ in _multiple evaluations_ that he was pushing his people too hard, and maybe some underlying stress could be dealt with.  So Hermann went to this office with a long couch and too many succulents where a broad-shouldered man with an easy smile told him, _Just talk.  None of this is being recorded.  None of it will be used against you.  Just say whatever’s on your mind._

The talking was pleasant, for a while.  Hermann could rant his frustrations on useless lab techs, malfunctioning equipment, higher-ups who wouldn’t fund the right projects and always wanted _faster._   But then the therapist began asking all these questions about _why_ it was so important for Hermann to carry on studying kaiju biology when the aliens were already understood well enough to end the war, and _why_ he desperately needed the PPDC council to understand his work when he was already tenured for the rest of his life, and _what would need to change in this situation for him to be happy._

And from there, the Socratic method circled and circled, a vulture nearing the next decaying corpse, until it centered on Newton.

 _You miss him,_ the therapist had said.  _Why don’t you go talk to him?  And I don’t mean send him emails about collaborating on projects.  I mean really go to him, in person, and find out what’s causing this distance between you – clearly it’s making you miserable, and I can only imagine it’s doing the same for him, but you’re engaged in this weird game of emotional chicken where neither of you wants to acknowledge that something is wrong._

Hermann hadn’t known how to answer that one.  There were no words to explain the black hole that yawned behind his chalk boards, cavernous and hungry.  He had long since accepted their one night together for what it was, a physical reaction to the stress and excitement of the past few days.  If one _my love_ and attempts at cuddling the next morning were enough to drive Newton to another city, he can only imagine the repercussions for physically going there and verifying what he already knows.

And so he clammed up in his sessions, crossed his arms and locked his jaw until the top brass eventually let it rest.

Hermann made a private copy of his file, after that.  Hacked into the medical system as easily as updating code on a jaeger.  He printed the document, stuffed it in a neat, manila folder, and stuck it in his quarters.  He pulls it out to read sometimes early in the mornings, when his mind is not quite in focus and his mattress is too empty.

_Stubborn as hell, and twice as fiery.  Obsessive, prickly, doesn’t play well with others unless they are doing exactly what he tells them.  Always has to be right.  Deeply unhappy – likely due to his separation from one Dr. Newt Geiszler, although he refuses to talk about that.  My best hypothesis is, he’s suffering from a broken heart and blaming himself entirely._

Hermann likes to keep the world in sharp focus.  Even when it is he at the other end of the blade.

 

 

Mako dies, and everything really goes to shit.

It seems logical, that her death – her plane, going down despite her brother reaching up to catch her – should send the world careening into its antithesis.  No other singular person holds enough force to start that centripetal motion.  But logic doesn’t stop Hermann from kneeling in front of her memorial for hours, whispering the calculations that made Gypsy Danger strong and wishing she was beside him.  Wishing her quiet smile and her steady voice could keep his heart from growing too fast and bursting out like another nuclear reactor.

When they say she’s sent a message, he jumps at the chance to decode it.  Brings three cups of coffee and five packets of rice crackers down to the lab, pushes his glasses up his nose, and stays put for twenty-seven hours.

He runs armadas of algorithms and tests endless decryption programs and covers ten chalkboards in crisp white.  One intern has to convince him to use the bathroom and another brings him cups of water.  He loses two buttons, generates four stacks of waste paper.  He stays on his feet until the soles ache.

And then, slumping in his chair sometime around hour twenty-six, his eyes close and he is back in the Hong Kong Shatterdome during his first few weeks – his limbs too big for his body his heart jittery from _sudden proximity_ his mind never remembering what the refractory was serving – he is clattering into an empty cafeteria, stomach growling, to the sight of a lanky girl, hair bright pink and feet swinging gaily below the table.

“This is how I remember,” she said.  “Chicken on Mondays, veggie on Tuesdays, tofu on Wednesdays, stew on Thursdays, pizza on Fridays, tofu again on Saturdays, soup on Sundays.  C-V-T-S-P-O-U.  Cousin Val Takes Shit Post Operation Underwear.”

_C-V-T-S-P-O-U._

Hermann uses it as a cipher code for A-B-C-D-E-F-G, and thirty seconds later, he’s found Severnaya Zemlya.

He spares one moment to rest his hand on the chalkboard, whisper, “Thank you, old friend,” before he runs for the Marshall.

 

 

_The nightmare is stronger tonight._

_Hermann is rushing through the lab racing towards Newton – but this time he yanks Newton’s headset off and is thrust into the drift himself – he is diving beneath the Pacific only the water is red as blood and thick with rust – he is crying out there is nobody to hear him – he is trapped beneath the waves he is sinking he is turned to stone he is stone he is sunken into himself he is trapped in the space between two negatives he is not –_

_he is not –_

_he is screaming but the sound only echoes._

When Hermann wakes up, tears are pouring down his cheeks and his hands are shaking.

 

 

There was a moment of clarity, once.  February 20th, 2028.

Hermann woke from a dream of drifting – the kaiju world blue and cold around him, Newton strange and cold beside him – to a ringing phone.

“I’m sorry,” Newton said.

“For what?” Hermann asked.

“For not being able to pull away.”

And he hung up, before Hermann could ask him to define his terms.

 

 

The Marshall tells Hermann _go to Newt_ and he barely stops to grab his coat.

For all that the world is ending it’s good to be rushing somewhere, to have a _true deadline_ rather than one fabricated by the urgency of bureaucracy and the crunching of stale numbers, and humming beneath Hermann’s ever-degrading professionalism is the desire to _go find Newton and pull him out._  

Hermann gets into the Shao facility easily, his stature rigid enough that nobody questions his credentials or his motivations.  And he finds Newton easily, too – a scion of the PPDC in this strange, too-clean facility, all plastic and metal and not a single good reliable chalkboard.

“What are you doing here?” Newton asks and soon they’re bickering like old times again.  Only this leaves a strange taste in Hermann’s mouth, same as at the Shatterdome, same as every email and text message he’s received in the last ten years.

“Technically, _you_ helped _me_ save the world,” Newton says, and it would be just like Newton to dwell on the particulars, except it is nothing like Newton – Hermann remembers his face when Hermann suggested they _share the neural load_ , remembers how desperately he wanted _someone, anyone_ to believe him, desperate enough he told his whole story to a criminal with a Szechuan restaurant for a name – remembers how desperately Newton _wanted_ –

The elevator, too, is off-color, off-timbre.  He goes for the legs, Newton goes for the arms, but it is all useless acrobatics compared to what they were _built for,_ the curiosity and persistence that Hermann pushes towards while Newton stands still.

_“I’d hug you if I didn’t have a rule against public displays of affection.”_

_“Okay, well, if you’re done groping me –”_

Hermann leans in, Newton leans out.  There is something tugging at him, some last piece of the puzzle he has been putting together slowly for ten years, some error in the code that Hermann cannot find – some _sneaky bastard_ in more than just the back door to Shao’s system –

And then Newton hits the wrong button, and the whole chalkboard falls.

 _I’m ending the world,_ he says.  And he could be, he could be ending the wider world, but he is not quite ending _this_ world, this circle of two scientists in a too-white room spinning and growing hazy, this presence at the back of Hermann’s mind pushing him to go take Newton’s hand and –

This is the nightmare.  Perhaps even the same nightmare, the revolving door that has pushed and pushed and pushed until he wants to scream or kick or grab Newton by the collar and demand _answers_ –

Newton is shrinking – wearing that smile he must put on in the morning with the pressed shirt and the too-tight bowtie, speaking in his own voice but without his warmth – his fingers tighten around Hermann’s neck his wrists tighten to start the neural handshake and –

Newton’s fingers tighten around Hermann’s neck.  Hermann scrambles up to meet him – gasping for air or for purchase –

_“I’m just not feeling myself these days.”_

This is not the nightmare – this is the pulse bulging out of Hermann’s neck and the tightening of Newton’s fingers to match.  This is a rhythm like drifting twisted sideways and yanked out of orbit.  This is everything crashing back – years of silence refusal to see new projects blank responses to collaboration refusal to meet for more than a few minutes – a marching away of too-tight bowties of pressed smiles of shirt-sleeves never rolled up – a voice out of tune with itself – all that distance comes to a single point, perfect as a Euclidian proof.

**_I’m sorry, Hermann, they’re in my head._ **

No.  _No,_ he would say if he had the air, sends into the space between their fingers instead.

This is no nightmare.  This is diabolical, sure, makes Hermann want to take a cane to the entire blasted kaiju race, but it’s only aliens trying to take over the world.  He’s been here before.

He can save them again.

 

 

It’s all too fast, after that.

Fast enough that Hermann doesn’t have time to think about Newton, let alone search for him – Hermann is a collection of neural circuits held up by unsteady muscles and fast-moving arteries, shooting from jaeger to control room to drawing board as fast as his legs will carry him.  He is the second law of physics – _a body at motion will stay at motion –_ never mind that he is subsisting on coffee and crackers and hasn’t slept properly in days – never mind that if he closes his eyes for even a _second_ he sees a silhouette lit in red –

**_I’m sorry, Hermann, they’re in my head._ **

Rocket thrusters need a hundred thousand pounds of fuel each, the chemical reactions to manipulate the kaiju materials don’t work that fast so he needs a catalyst, nothing they have in the lab works so he’ll design a new one – or offer his last bottle of good vodka to the intern who can design a new one in the next two hours, whatever, it’s four years old and he’s not going to drink it any time soon –

_I’m sorry, Hermann, they’re in my head._

Something in Bracer Phoenix’s older central system won’t sync correctly with the new core they had to install in her – Hermann paces and shouts as eight different J-techs comb the code for the error, then pushes them all out of the way and snaps _I’ll do it myself_ – pushes up his glasses peers into the screen until his pupils are fuzzy with blue numbers but he finds it, a fucking _misplaced comma_ in the activation protocol –

_I’m sorry, Hermann, they’re in my head._

Liwen Shao keeps striding around like the owns the place, still clicking in her heels as though they aren’t _going to war to save the entire goddamned world,_ and it takes Hermann watching her shove a misaligned piston back into place on Saber Athena to realize this woman might actually be an ally – she sticks her hand out the next time they’re both grabbing more coffee and says, “I know this is an inopportune time but I’ve read all of your papers,” and he says, “All of them, even the poorly constructed electrical engineering ones,” and she grins and says, _“Especially_ those, they were so fun to correct” –

_I’m sorry, Hermann, they’re in my head._

There’s a problem with the reentry tanks for the fuel pods because _of course there fucking is,_ the design needs to be both strong enough to withstand atmospheric pressure and light enough not to pull the things down too fast and the engineers can only get it one or the other – Hermann locks himself in his office for exactly ninety minutes, he sets a timer, and draws on loose sheets of office paper free-handing drag calculations until he gets it right – sprints back to the hangar to ask Liwen to check his math and she’s already laughing, _you could have just scanned these and messaged them to me_ –

_I’m sorry, Hermann, they’re in my head._

They’re entrusting this mission to a bunch of kids, _kids,_ Hermann has to educate them on not putting their _damn feet in their mouths_ and that’s before he even starts explaining the tech that will get them to Tokyo, has anyone up in HR even called the _parents_ of these brats and what will happen if one of them doesn’t make it back –

_I’m sorry, Hermann, they’re in my head._

Hermann walks into the lab ten minutes before launch twentieth cup of coffee in hand limbs ready to collapse and suddenly he’s back in Hong Kong – rafters shaken by old American rock – guitar wailing on about _born to be wild_ – one of the interns turns around and shouts _sorry, I needed this classical stuff to help me stay awake_ and Hermann waves his arm, replies _it’s fine_ –

_I’m sorry, Hermann, they’re in my head._

He never knows what to do with his hands.

When he has a pad to hold, it’s easy.  Keep track of the thrusters, adjust the ignition levels, monitor the angle of ascent to make sure the kids reach Tokyo.  But once they hit the ground it’s all waiting and watching, and he’s never been good at this part – he switches between hands in his jacket pockets, wearing down the seams, hands clasped behind his back, nails digging into his palms, hands on the table in front of him, jittering so quickly he’s at risk of knocking over twelve distinct mugs of coffee –

Eventually, he settles for hands clutching his cane, knuckles going white.  An old classic, from the battle of Hong Kong.  He only takes one hand off to direct the 3-D projector, because they all know he’s still the best at it.

 _“It was Newt,”_ Liwen says. _“He’s in Tokyo.”_

Hermann’s first instinct is to correct her – _that’s Doctor Geiszler to you_ – and his second is to sprint from the control room.  He takes to reminding himself, with each breath he takes, _you are invaluable to this team, you are necessary on this base, you would have nothing to do out there in a city with three kaiju wreaking havoc._

The reminders get harder to swallow each time.

But soon there’s no _time_ at all – there’s only the kaiju evolving together – the jaegers taken down one by one – the brilliant stupid new kid climbing into Gypsy – Liwen flying the last of the fuel to Tokyo _when did she learn to pilot a jaeger_ – an explosion on top of Mount Fuji – trying so goddamned hard to smile the nerves in his cheeks start to hurt –

And then there’s Nate Lambert, on top of a skyscraper in Tokyo.

_“Anyone who’s listening… This is Ranger Lambert.  Be advised, we just caught ourselves a Newt.”_

And it is only Hermann’s fractured sense of professional courtesy that keeps him from commandeering the next helicopter to Tokyo.

 

 

_The nightmare is hazy, that night._

_Hermann is on the floor of the lab in Hong Kong knees scraping the cement – and he is speeding across the hangar floor calculations flapping in the air – and he is stuck on the end of a late night phone call dial tone echoing in the quiet – and he is stuck in a sea of electric blue watching classrooms and expeditions and his own face fly by like so many electrons shot along a wire –_

_And he is deep beneath the Pacific, the water is red as blood and thick with rust, swimming frantically in a direction he can’t identify.  Calling out only to have his voice swallowed in the endless waves._

 

 

“We searched Gesizler’s apartment,” Jake says.

Hermann does not look up from his calculations.  “And?”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

Now Hermann looks up.  He pulls off his reading glasses, places them neatly atop the stack of printouts detailing the results of Shao Industries neural tech in an old Mark III jaeger ( _we have data-processing systems for that now, you know,_ Reyes is always telling him, but he likes the weight of numbers materialized on his desk.)

Jake Pentecost is five feet nine inches tall, a pilot whose name is on the world’s lips, shaping up to be as good a ranger as his father (though Hermann’s far from stupid enough to tell him so.)  And yet he still creaks beneath Hermann’s gaze like a piece of rusty metal in a northern Siberian winter.

“There was a tank in his room,” Jake says.  “This tall,” and he holds up his hand above his head, “and filled with green liquid, streaked with what looked like human blood.  There was a kaiju brain inside, and something rigged up to it that looked like a makeshift Pons system –”

And no more does he need to describe it but Hermann is _there,_ ten years ago, finding brain in the tank Newton on the floor only the background is shifting – basement lab to bedroom cement floors to pressed sheets – and Newton is alone – _alone_ – nobody to yank that thing off his head and pull him out of the drift and –

Ten years.  The math is building in Hermann’s mind before he can tell it to stop.

“Go,” he tells Jake.  And then again, “Go!” because the kid isn’t moving fast enough and Hermann needs to stagger across the room to the non-hazardous waste containers before he relieves the contents of his stomach all over his reports.

He heaves for five minutes, then slides to a seat with his back against the wall for fifty.  Ten years.  That’s time enough for hundreds of drifts. _Thousands._   And all that time it would be trial and error – Newton taking notes, running procedures, conducting the biggest experimental long game since the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. set out to colonize the entire universe.  God, no wonder he never had time to collaborate on any of Hermann’s projects.

Hermann wonders if Newton had been pulled in by outside impulse the first time, if he’d been dreaming of the Precursors and sleepwalked to his storage room of old lab equipment or if he was simply curious.  If he only wanted to learn more about the kaiju’s motivations and how their hivemind worked.  He stuck his entire hand into a container of hydrochloric acid in middle-school science once just to find out what it felt like, he’d told Hermann once – similarly self-destructive actions could not be put past him.

Or if.  Hermann ticks back the time in his head – ten years ago, an empty lab, months of his confusion and fury at not knowing _why._   A night he wanted inked into his skin followed by emptiness without even a goodbye.  Newton must have been awfully lonely there, in a new city where he didn’t speak the language without a lab partner to shout at.  Perhaps he was only looking for company.

And Hermann has to pull himself up and stagger to the waste bins again even though his stomach is all bile, bacteria, and air, because he _knows_ which of those options is the most likely.

 

 

_The nightmares are quieter, now.  No more screams, no more blood, no more sinking.  Only a lab room in Hong Kong growing wider and wider.  Hermann on one side.  Newton on the other.  And no matter how fast he runs, he cannot cross that distance._

 

 

“You haven’t gone to see him.”

Liwen sits across the lab table, her hands folded on the smooth, dark surface.  She’s wearing a cotton T-shirt and black jeans, her hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, but she carries herself as though still presenting before the Council.  Her voice is quiet in the empty lab – echoing slightly, like a whisper in a cathedral.

Hermann sighs, takes a sip of his coffee.  “I have not.”

“Why?”

Others have asked him, too – the Marshall and all the rangers agree, he’s the man for the job.  “Closest to the issue,” Nate put it.  And Hermann almost laughed there in the briefing room – they have no idea how far he is.

“Kaiju biology was never my field,” Hermann says.  “Neither was psychology.  I would not know the first thing about mind control through drifting with a kaiju brain, much less how to snap someone out.”

Liwen watches him, her dark eyes sharp and unflinching.  Hermann remembers standing beside her in the Shatterdome, bent over her clipboard, feeling that if his cane snapped or his legs gave out she would hold him steady until he found a way to rebuild.

“You have all the expertise you need,” she says.

“And what expertise might that be?”

“You know _him.”_

 

**_I’m sorry, Hermann, they’re in my head._ **

_For this, at least, there is an elegant solution._

**_Get them out._ **

****

 

“You want to _what.”_

The Marshall’s face is blank, smooth as the metal of a jaeger’s surface.  Pentecost could do that, too, when he was particularly shocked.  So could Herc, when he had the position.  And Mako.  Maybe it’s a Marshall skill, staying steady for those looking up to you – and, god, he’s free-associating, he must really be nervous.

“I want to drift with him,” Hermann says.

“It makes sense,” Liwen adds, standing by his shoulder.  “Drifting pulled Dr. Geiszler into this position.  Drifting can push him out.”

Hermann nods.  Steadies his shoulders.  Lets his spine turn to steel.  A full-body salute.

“Aren’t you worried he’ll pull you in, too?” Jake asks.

“I kept him out the last time we drifted together,” Hermann replies.  “I can do it again.”

 

_And if I fail – if I go to that strange, dark place and watch the world burn – at least we will be together._

 

It is dark and quiet in the drift.

Deep quiet, like the bottom of the ocean or a too-clean laboratory floor.  Hermann sprints through his own memories easily – school too early children too cruel family too distant and none of it important now – until he is stuck in the nightmare.

A shivering man on a laboratory floor.  A brain swimming in perverted green.  Hermann wants to smash the whole thing with his cane – he’s _been here before,_ he’s _done this_ – but he is frozen as he watches his younger self crash in – cane abandoned legs buckling voice one pitch short of begging –

_Newton, what have you done?_

He watches his own fingers cradle Newton’s cheeks, so close and so desperate, and he wonders at the magnitude of this scene – one man saves another from the first’s bravery and stupidity, certainly a story as old as the human race itself.  And yet this is the scene that has taunted him for ten years – _you weren’t there you didn’t believe him you came too late –_ this is the nightmare, more than any vision of the kaiju or end of the world.

But if this is the nightmare, this is also the resolution.  Action and reaction – drifting alone and together.  _Two pilots.  Share the neural load._

 _I’m coming,_ Hermann whispers, and he charges forward into the space where Newton’s mind will be.

And there is a cavern.  A gorge.  Hermann has been to the Grand Canyon but that was nothing like this, that was red and burnished and teeming with life while this is hard rock, endless surface, dark and slippery like obsidian or glass.

This must be their world – this can only be their world.  Hermann rushes forward, his shoes unable to grab purchase – Hermann approaches the edge.

He hears a voice from the other side, loud and desperate and real as a heartbeat.  Screaming his name.

 

_For this, at least, there is an elegant solution._

Hermann turns, digging into the surface, and takes two steps back – then charges for the edge.  One stride, two strides three and four – his form here has no cane but his legs cry out for its ghost – his breath comes faster – and he’s over the gap –

 

_suspended_

 

And he’s poring over a letter under a single lamp in Cambridge and he’s shouting about entrails in a dark lab room somewhere outside Hong Kong and he’s standing in LOCCENT with Newton’s arm around his shoulders and he’s peeling off a shirt drenched in sweat to reveal the monsters underneath and he’s pinned against a panel of computers Newton’s hands tightening around his neck and he’s gripping a too-warm palm _by jove we are_

and he’s across the chasm and he’s pulled up by one arm warm calloused colorful

and he’s back on earth rough and wet and solid

 

_by jove we are._

 

Hermann opens his eyes to Newton releasing his headset, then lingering.  His hands go to Hermann’s temples, his cheekbones, trace around and back to his ears then down, finger-light across the place where they’d left bruises weeks before.  His touch is almost a specter, Monarch butterfly wings on the edge of a sunflower, and his eyes are wet and so very, very blue.

Hermann gives Newton ten seconds.  Ten seconds again.  Ten seconds more.  The theory was promising but the scientist demands _proof –_

“Hermann,” Newton says.  His voice is raspy, as though out of use.  “Please.  Say something.”

And Hermann leans in – presses their foreheads together, skin against warm-blooded skin.

“Newton,” he says.  “Newton.”

 

 

 

 

The fight is far from over, of course.

Hermann does not ask for Newton to be released.  He asks instead for amenities, small gestures – a few books, pillows, access to a toilet.  He asks for himself – permission to stay with Newton, as long as he is confined.

The second request turns out to be easier for the PPDC to grant than the first.  The Marshall sees the logic of “someone with expertise remaining on guard and gathering information,” but the council argues for three hours about whether Newton would be able to conjure a kaiju out of thin air and sic it on the base in the thirty seconds it takes him to walk to the closest bathroom.  (Hermann ends up resolving to go with Newton each time he needs to piss, which starts off endearing but quickly becomes aggravating.  One would think that an award-winning biologist with six PhDs would know to wash his hands.)

But Hermann stays – _he stays._   PPDC staff pull in Hermann’s mattress from his quarters, his stack of textbooks and tablet loaded with back issues of _Nature,_ and he sinks back into his skin, comfortable in a way he hasn’t been since the night the breach was closed.

Hermann and Newton spend the days reading, mostly.  Newton has missed ten years’ worth of advancements in his fields, and Hermann has ten years’ worth of annotations and earmarks implicitly reading _Newton would love this._   They talk through possible theories, argue over the validity of different methods, invent so many papers they could co-write that Hermann starts a list on one of his yellow legal pads.  Once a day, he calls his lab to check in on their clean-up and processing work – the interns joke that this is his first vacation in a decade.

Sometimes Newton’s voice goes off pitch, his eyes tint red and his movements flow too smoothly. At times like those Hermann holds him, dives into the drift and extends an arm.  Whispers postulates and kaiju names until Newton comes back.  And then afterwards, they curl up together on Hermann’s mattress, Hermann’s arms folded across Newton’s chest.  Sharing body heat until their centers of gravity are indistinguishable from one another.

Sometimes they spend the day reading, sometimes they spend the day pulling Newton back from himself, sometimes they spend it moving warm and wet on the mattress, tracing shapes and exchanging oxygen.  They learn to get as close as possible without melding into one.  It’s easy: trial and error.  Action and reaction.

And sometimes, they talk.

_There is this, shouted in the middle of an argument on string theory:_

“But how can you say that when you don’t even _know,_ you’ve been _gone_ ten years –”

“I wasn’t gone!  I could still see everything – I was trapped back there, watching it all and unable to say a thing, do a thing to stop it –”

“I’m sorry.”

“No – no.  I am.”

“You shouldn’t have to be.”

“But I am.”

 

_And there is this, quietly lobbed into the middle of the room during a long afternoon:_

“You should’ve just come to dinner, like I kept asking you.  To meet Alice.”

“And what, precisely, did you expect to result?  I would have seen the kaiju brain in the bedroom, yanked the cord –”

“Uh.  Yeah, actually.”

“Oh.”

 

_And there is this, casually dropped over PPDC-provided stew:_

“I named the kaiju, you know.”

“What did you pick?”

“Hakuja, for the alligator-like one.  Strikethorn, for the spiky one.  And Raijin, for the really nasty horned one.”

“Those are terrible names.”

“Right, because you could’ve done so much better.”

“I can!  Just let me at ‘em!  I’ll name them right now!  I’ll name them so good!”

“Please, love, you’re slipping away from correct grammar.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t – oh.”

 

_And finally there is this, whispered into the flickering emergency lights at three o’clock in the morning:_

“I’m sorry.”

“What – why are _you_ apologizing?”

“For never going to you.  I wanted to, I _wanted_ to, but I was so worried –”

“Hey.  Hey.  It’s okay.  We’re here now.  We’re here.”

 

 

Hermann races into the lab.

It’s quiet – too quiet, save for the whirring in one corner, the glowing green in the tank, the body hunched into a chair skin rattling –

He is across the space between heartbeats and he is –

_Newton, what have you done?_

He is hands on Newton’s face, he is fingertips tracing Newton’s check, he is forehead coming to rest on Newton’s crown – he is a planet knocked softly back into orbit – he is one half of an equation learning to balance –

he is –

He is lying on his back in salt water, bobbing and twisting with the weight of waves, cool at his back and sun warming his face –

Hermann lifts his head and finds a familiar coastline, the grays and blues and yellows of Newquay, where his mother used to take the family during the summers.  Bastien would build endless sand castles and Hermann would swim out too far and Karla would threaten to drown Dieterich if he splashed her one more time and Father would doze over his physics journals and Mother would watch them all from behind her oversized sunglasses –

But now Hermann looks to the coastline and sees Newton, splashing into the surf.  He’s shirtless, glasses this close to lost in the waves, but he’s laughing, light as an airplane just after takeoff –

Light as a sun pulling Hermann into orbit –

“Hermann?”

There’s a hand on Hermann’s cheek.  Warm, trembling.  Pulse flickering fast.

Hermann grabs onto it, keeps his eyes closed for a moment.  He opens them slowly and then draws Newton closer – forehead against forehead, cheek against cheek.  Not a planet and a sun, not an equation and its solution, but two human beings.  Living collections of neurons, skin, arteries.  Built up from the earth and built to protect it.  Built to protect each other.

“Hermann?” Newton asks again.  “Are you alright?”

“I’m getting there,” Hermann says.

And he pulls Newton close, and he holds on, and he holds on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> _“The warm bodies_  
>    _shine together_  
>  _in the darkness_  
>  _the hand moves_  
>  _to the center_  
>  _of the flesh_  
>  _the skin trembles_  
>  _in happiness_  
>  _and the soul comes_  
>  _joyful to the eye –_
> 
>  
> 
> _yes, yes_  
>                  _that’s what_  
>  _I wanted,_  
>  _I always wanted,_  
>  _I always wanted,_  
>  _to return_  
>  _to the body_  
>  _where I was born.”_
> 
> _-_ Song, Allen Ginsberg

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> a couple of citation notes:  
> 1\. the third scene was directly inspired by [this comic](https://twitter.com/geniusbeee/status/978485768518709248) by kiku / @geniusbeee.  
> 2\. i've read [anthology](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075605) so many times at this point that any pacific rim fic i write is as inexorably tied to irisbleufic's verse as it is to canon.  
> 3\. the full ginsberg poem (referenced in the subtitle and at the end) can be found [here](http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/poetry2/ginsberg_allen.html).
> 
> and i'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor)! ask me how the pacific rim franchise is basically postmodernism with giant robots.


End file.
